Threats to our food system are not abstract. We have recently seen how drought and other extreme weather events, the war in Europe, or the pandemic, have contributed to price spikes on different ingredients.

That's why, in collaboration with the Green Solutions Center at the University of Copenhagen, we have built  the Interdisciplinary Food Resilience Network (IFRN). 

The project is a continuation of our Interdisciplinary Future Food Network (IFFN), where we held workshops, open events and produced catalogues on food system challenges. Now with IFRN, we will dive into four new challenges and a stronger academic partnership. 

The partnership

We've partnered with the Green Solutions Center at UCPH to bridge science with entrepreneurship, and the timing matters: IFRN starts just as the new government sets out its ambitions to increase Denmark's food system resilience and self-sufficiency.

“Several factors point toward continued volatility and price spikes in food, which is why we're bringing researchers and industry together to initiate solutions.”
Helena Gustavs Formgren, Project Leader, Kost Studio

The mission

IFRN unifies actors across academic disciplines and the entire food value chain, transforming research into tangible action. The aim is to spark meaningful conversations on food resilience that lead to a collective understanding, and to real change.

"We're focused on cross-disciplinarity in research, and for that to happen, we also need to collaborate on something out there and bring that knowledge in. The food system is one of the biggest challenges, and I'm sure it will become even more so now, because of the climate crisis. We have a lot of researchers interested in this area, so it's important for us too."
Mette Frimodt Møller, Green Solutions Center, University of Copenhagen

The 4 challenges

The project spans over one and a half years and is structured into four deep dives, each one on a specific food resilience challenge: 

• Navigating increasing food price fluctuations, 

• Scaling resilient crops, 

• Valorizing European sidestreams for self-sufficiency,

• Shifting consumer behaviour

Each one runs through expert interviews and problem-mapping workshops, an open-source inspirational catalogue, and a solution-generating workshop with the network.

"With this network we can gather an economist, a food scientist, a food historian, a venture builder, a retail manager, an environmental scientist, all at the same breakfast table. It might seem like an unusual mix, but that is exactly the point. When a problem is on a system level, you cannot solve it from only one corner."
Helena Gustavs Formgren, Project Leader, Kost Studio

The network is funded by GUDP under the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, to help solve food resilience challenges in Denmark.

Would you like to join one of the four networks? Reach out to helena@koststudio.com.

Project leads
Helena Gustavs Formgren
Asmus Gamdrup Jensen

Project team
Peter Nøhr
Louise Brønnum Beck
Mette Frimodt Møller, Green Solutions Center